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NDP leader Adrian Dix has vowed to wage a strong campaign in every riding in the province, taking the fight to the turf of various Liberal cabinet ministers. The Liberals staged a similar all-out battle in 2001, winning all but two seats and consigning the NDP to three terms in opposition.

Photograph by: JONATHAN HAYWARD
, THE CANADIAN PRESS

VICTORIA — From the outset of his time as New Democratic Party leader, Adrian Dix has made it clear that he was not about to concede any seat in the legislature to the B.C. Liberals.

“My view of the NDP is that we have to contest every seat,” he declared. “It’s good for democracy when there’s strong candidates in every seat.”

The New Democrats had in the past tacitly spotted the governing party as many as two dozen seats, demoralizing supporters before the campaign even got underway, letting the other side off the hook from having to defend its turf.

No longer. This time, as he said again and again to supporters, party organizers, the news media and anyone else who was listening, “we’re running to win every seat.”

He meant it too; witness his approach since the official four-week phase of Election 2013 got underway on April 16.

He launched his campaign in the premier’s riding, then began rolling out his platform in instalments on the home turf of the ministers of finance, education, environment, social development, jobs, justice, agriculture, health, usually matching the day’s theme to the ministerial bailiwick.

He’s taken his campaign to the Okanagan, where the Liberals have swept every seat — “they have treated this place like they own it” he told the Penticton Western News last year — “in four successive elections.”

He’s taken on the governing party in the Fraser Valley, long regarded as the most secure territory in the province for parties of the centre right, leastways until the NDP breakthrough in Chilliwack-Hope last year.

He’s left no doubt about his designs on Vancouver Island, where the Liberals hold only three of 14 seats. “We’re campaigning hard on every seat on Vancouver Island,” he told reporter Rob Shaw of the Victoria Times Colonist last week. “If you look at the results in Comox, Saanich and Oak Bay ridings, they were very close last time, all of them, and we have stronger campaigns in all three ridings this time.”

The latter vow helps explain his change of position on the proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline.

As recently as April 11, Dix said that as “a matter of principle,” he wouldn’t take a stand until the company had submitted a formal application. Then on Monday of this week, he came out against his understanding of the proposal, a switch that the party promptly branded “a principled stand against pipelines.”

So if you don’t like his principles on April 11, try those on April 22.

Principle-swapping notwithstanding, the switch was undertaken to reduce the potential threat from the upstart Green party, which had been pitching itself as the only party opposed to all pipeline and all tankers.

Not to say the Greens could by themselves prevent Dix and the New Democrats winning enough seats to form the next government. But they do stand in the way of his goal of winning “every seat” on the island, and could undercut his chances of winning some ridings in Metro Vancouver as well.

Dix’s determination to overturn the conventional wisdom about supposedly safe seats for the other side has doubtless contributed to the upbeat mood among New Democrats. They may still be pinching themselves over the numbers in the opinion polls, but it must be gratifying to see the leader trying to win ridings that the party has usually written off before the dropping of the election writs.

The drive to win every seat — or at least try to win every seat — dovetails with another of Dix’s views since becoming leader, that “we cannot accomplish everything in the first term of government.”

That oft-expressed position has been interpreted as a rationale for lowering expectations among his own supporters —“I’m going to be modest in my agenda” — as well as a reassurance to voters with bad memories of the last term of NDP government.

After all, a leader who wants a shot at a second term is less likely to go too far in the first. One recalls the line attributed to Dave Barrett at the outset of his one and only term as an NDP premier: “We did not come here to get re-elected. We came to implement our programs.”

But Dix, being a student of politics in general and B.C. politics in particular, is probably thinking that the biggest possible win this time will improve his odds of avoiding the one-term blues.

Case in point, the 2001 provincial election. On the eve of that vote, Dix, then a columnist for the Victoria Times Colonist, noted how the then-leader of the B.C. Liberals, Gordon Campbell, “told his candidates recently that his goal was to win every seat in the province in the election.”

Dix cautioned about the dangers of giving a single party “a blank cheque” and “total control of the legislature.” But that was pretty much the result, as the B.C. Liberals captured all but two seats in the legislature and the New Democrats were consigned to what proved to be three terms of opposition.

Like Campbell before him, Dix has likely concluded that the surest guarantee of a second term is to crush one’s opponents in winning the first. He’s not in this campaign for a mere win; he’s craving a landslide.

NDP leader Adrian Dix has vowed to wage a strong campaign in every riding in the province, taking the fight to the turf of various Liberal cabinet ministers. The Liberals staged a similar all-out battle in 2001, winning all but two seats and consigning the NDP to three terms in opposition.

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